


you make me dream of you (and dreams are better than reality)

by echoesofstardust



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, Dream AU, F/M, I didn't intend for this to be a coffee shop AU, I don't need to be studying for exams anymore!!!, It has become one, hopefully a happy ending, inspired by @rainy-sunshine on tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-25 18:27:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14384484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoesofstardust/pseuds/echoesofstardust
Summary: She finishes up, washes the dishes and puts them away, and gets ready for bed. She curls up underneath the covers but the heavenly feel of the sheets does nothing to soothe her soul. She closes her eyes and wills herself to fall asleep, and she dreams.Dreams of maybes and could’ve beens.





	1. maybes and could've beens

**Author's Note:**

> So. RPF. Here we go. I blame two ice-dancing idiots who may or may not be in love.
> 
> Dedicated to @rainy-sunshine's headcanons on tumblr. Inspired by not a specific one, but bits and pieces. (If you haven't seen them, you should go check them out. The soulmate AU made me bawl.)

Tessa shivers from the relentless cold that has battered London for the past few days. The heels of her boots clack heavily on the pavement, the rhythmic staccato echoing in the street. She pauses as she reaches her destination: a quaint, cozy coffee shop nestled in the corner of two usually busy streets. The bell rings when she pushes the door open, the warmth of the interior enveloping her, like a hug from—

She shuts that thought quickly. Lets the quiet murmur of the café’s customers fill her ears as she waits behind in line. Her fingers fidget at the edges of the sleeves of her coat. As she moves to the front of the line, she orders a flat white, placing a few dollars in the tip jar on the counter. The lid is decorated with two pairs of ice skates—one black, one white—and Tessa’s eyes linger on them for a moment, before moving aside to wait for her order.

Once the call of ‘Tessa!’ is made, and her coffee is collected, she takes a seat at one of the couches near the window. She sips it slowly, letting the warm liquid chase away the last of the cold that seemed to want to cling to her from her time outside in the London winter. 

(If there’s a part of her that refuses to warm, that has always been dark and damp and cold, since she last saw him, god, years ago, then she pretends not to notice.)

As she holds her cup to her lips, she looks at the faint, pale line on the fourth finger of her left hand. Was it only weeks ago that she was a wife? Well, technically, she still was. But seeing Richard’s head between the legs of his secretary, in her books, ended her marriage, even if on paper, they were still legally bound. She wasn’t surprised to find out about Richard’s affair. She wasn’t surprised to discover that contrary to her husband’s claims, he wasn’t actually averse to going down on women. (She knew that was due to the fact that she would have never reciprocated.)

It felt like such a cliché. She wanted to surprise Richard, wanted to do something for her marriage even though she knew it had more cracks than she could count, on the verge of falling apart. Opening his office door and seeing the scene that played out before her, she always thought that if this ever happened to her, she would feel heartbreak and screaming and anger and pure red.

But she didn’t. If anything, it was the relief of turning the last page of a heavy textbook during her years in college, the last thud that told her it was over. She stood in the doorway for what seemed like years, instead of the seconds that it probably was. After a particularly loud moan (from Crystal? Christine?) she cleared her throat. 

“Ahem.”

The shock on both their faces was priceless. She wished there was a camera to capture that exact moment. It takes every ounce of her willpower to keep a straight face. “Tessa.”

“Richard.” She smiled, the razor-sharp one the media never saw, the one reserved for those who find themselves unlucky enough to make an enemy out of Tessa Virtue. “I want a divorce.” She slipped off the ring that was a size too big, and gathered what remains of her athleticism and threw it at his face. It landed perfectly in the middle of his eyebrows (she hoped it bruised). She turned away, laughing, and she’s quite certain his office now thinks she’s crazy.

(That night, she phoned all the local gossip rags and divulges about the affair. They cooed and comforted superficially, but Tessa didn’t mind. As long as his face was plastered all over Ontario, condemning him, well, she won’t say she was _happy_ , per se, but she won’t say that she _wasn’t_ either. Any money paid to her, she donated to local charities.)  

A giggling sound catches her attention. She looks up from her coffee. A mother and her baby sit on the couch next to hers, the mother gently tickling the tummy of her child. The peals of laughter that erupt are the best thing that Tessa has heard in a long time. The baby seems to sense her looking and turns to face her. A chubby hand reaches out to Tessa.

“Oh, honey, have you made a friend?” The mother laughs as her baby squirms towards Tessa.

Tessa had never thought of herself as particularly fond of babies, but she scoots closer towards them and lets the baby wrap a hand around her finger.

“You’re so cute, aren’t you? Yes, yes, you are,” Tessa says, smiling. She’s turned into one of those people that babble at babies, but she can’t find it in herself to care.

“Her name’s Sophia,” the mother murmurs, eyes soft.

“That’s a beautiful name,” Tessa murmurs back. She’s never had the urge to have children, not with Richard, even before their marriage fell apart, was perfectly content to be the aunt of wonderful nieces and nephews. But something shifts within her in that moment.

Her mind wanders, if she had married someone else, could she have had a family by now? Someone to look at the way that this mother looks at her child. Maybe if she had married someone in particular—

She shuts that thought down. No use in maybes or could’ve beens. But she can feel tears pooling in her eyes. Sophia’s mother shifts Sophia in her lap. “Tessa, are you okay? "

“Yes, I’m fine.” Tessa whispers, voice tremulous. “You know my name?”

“Everyone still knows you, Tessa. London doesn’t forget their greatest pride and joy easily.” Sophia’s mother chews her lip, contemplating something, “I don’t mean to pry, but is it because of…” She trails off.

Tessa knows what she is alluding to. “No, it’s not. My marriage ending is better for all parties involved, especially me.” And as she says the words, she knows it’s true. Saying yes to Richard is quite easily the second-biggest mistake of her life. 

(The first was never going after the one person who meant the most to her. But there’s no use in maybes or could’ve beens.)

Sophia’s mother smiles. “That’s good to hear, Tessa. I’m sure he never deserved you anyway. But I was actually thinking about…”

“Scott!” A voice shouts. “It’s good to see you!” There’s a distinct sound of a man-hug, the hands clasping and the other hitting on the back.

“…that.” Sophia’s mother finishes wryly.

Tessa freezes. Her pulse roars in her ears, leaving a ringing in its wake. Her stomach drops. Sophia’s mother notices her expression and bundles Sophia into her stroller. “Tessa, we’re going to go. Did you want to walk out with us?” She leans in closer and whispers, “They’re at the back end of the café. They won’t notice us if we leave quietly and quickly.”

Tessa hears the hidden part of her message: _He won’t see you if you leave quickly._

“Okay,” Tessa nods. If this was a comedy, this will be the part where she tries to stand and everything falls, causing a huge commotion and no end of embarrassment to her. But fate is on her side, and she, Sophia and Sophia’s mother are able to slip out quietly, no one else the wiser.

“Thank you for that,” Tessa says, once they are a block away from the coffee shop. “I’m not…I’m not ready to see him.” _I don’t know if I’ll ever be._

“Don’t even think about it,” Sophia’s mother grins at her. It hits Tessa that she doesn’t know her name.

“No, thank you for that. And I realise that I’ve been so rude that I haven’t asked for your name,” Tessa winces.

“Oh, I didn’t even realise. It’s Charlotte.” Charlotte lets one hand go of the stroller and offers it to Tessa to shake. Tessa grasps it firmly.

“Charlotte, thank you so much for today,” Tessa says. Sophia babbles from her stroller. Tessa offers her hand to Sophia again. Sophia wraps her hand around Tessa’s finger. “Thank you too, Sophia.”

Tessa parts ways with them once she reaches the street where her apartment is. She’s lucky to have found one quickly. Charlotte offers as she waves goodbye, “Tessa, if you ever need anything, just to talk or whatever, Sophia and I are always at the café every Saturday afternoon.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Tessa smiles as she walks away. Her quiet apartment doesn’t seem quite as empty or dark as she walks in. She hangs her coat on the rack, prepares dinner haphazardly, hoping that her kitchen wouldn’t catch on fire. 

She thinks she can hear his voice chiding her, and for once today, she lets herself think about him. _Oh, T. You really need to learn to cook, kiddo_. _Who’s going to feed you when I’m not there?_

It feels like a snippet of a memory, maybe of a dinner from the years in Kitchener-Waterloo, or Michigan or Montreal, when he cooked them a meal because she knows you can’t rely on Tessa Virtue in the kitchen. But she’s not sure. It’s been too long ago.

Scott.

She still remembers when it used to be their names intertwined. Tessa-and-Scott. Virtue-and-Moir. Never one without the other. When did it all change?

_You know when_. 

Something splashes onto her plate. She feels the tears fall. Hearing his name in the café, being less than ten metres away, brings out a cascade of aching regret that she had long ago shoved in a box labelled with his name and pushed into the furthest corner of her mind. No use in maybes or could’ve beens.

She finishes up, washes the dishes and puts them away, and gets ready for bed. She curls up underneath the covers but the heavenly feel of the sheets does nothing to soothe her soul. She closes her eyes and wills herself to fall asleep, and she dreams.

Dreams of maybes and could’ve beens.

***

Tessa wakes up. Before she even opens her eyes, she can already tell that something is off. The sheets feel different. The bed smells different. The bed smells partly like her favourite lotion and shampoo, but also like musk and sandalwood. It kind of smells a little bit like—

She opens her eyes. This is not her apartment. This is not her bed.

She sits up, slowly. This must be a dream, she thinks. She stands up, realising that she was wearing a Leafs shirt. Just a Leafs shirt. A dream, she repeats, this is a dream. She walks out the bedroom, down the hallway and down the stairs. She can hear something frying in the kitchen, smells something delicious in the air. Definitely a dream, she laughs to herself. She thanks her subconscious for dreaming up a roommate that can apparently cook.

As she enters the kitchen, she sees a shirtless back, dark hair curling in different directions. Her stomach drops.

He turns around and lights up as he sees her, “Tessa! Breakfast is nearly ready.”

Scott comes towards her and brushes the gentlest of kisses across her lips. She thinks she should be shocked considering her lips are finally touching his, but she just kind of melts into him. It’s just a dream, she repeats, but instead of being a comfort, the words bring about an unpleasant ache in her chest, just slightly to the left.

She can feel tears gather at the corner of her eyes. Maybes and could’ve beens, she thinks. Scott notices, he had always noticed, but Tessa prays he won’t comment. He doesn’t.

He turns off the stove, sliding the pancakes onto a plate with finesse, and places them down on the kitchen counter. He wraps his arms around her, nuzzling her hair. Tessa thinks she might actually cry. How long has she wanted this to happen? But she doesn’t want to make a scene, doesn’t want this domestic scene to shatter, and it feels so, so fragile. If this is a dream, it’s tempting to never want to wake up. She lets herself sink into him, the skin of his chest warm to her fingertips. She lets her heartbeat and breathing sync with his, as if they were about to go onto the rink for a competition, as if no time has passed at all. 

When he pulls away first, her body involuntarily chases his. She feels a chuckle rumble in his chest, but pulls her in tighter anyway.

“Tess,” he whispers eventually, “our pancakes are getting cold. Plus one of us needs to check on Sophie.”

“Sophie?” Tessa asks.

Scott looks at her quizzically, one eyebrow quirked up. “Oh T, I know you’re not your best self in the mornings, but this is Sophie? Our daughter?”

Oh. Tessa’s daughter. With Scott. Maybes and could’ve beens.

“I’ll go check on her,” Tessa says. She hopes she can guess where the nursery is, but if this is the future she could’ve had with Scott, then she thinks she’ll figure it out. Mostly, she needs to hide from Scott because she really is about to cry.

She walks back up the stairs, counting the steps and evening her breathing. She spots the door across the bedroom and opens it. There’s a pale white crib with a mobile of stuffed animals hanging above it. She pads closer and kneels down beside it. Sophie sleeps contentedly, sucking softly on her thumb. 

Tessa brushes her fingertips against Sophie’s cheek. “Morning, Sophia,” Tessa murmurs, “Mama’s here.”

In the darkness of the nursery, she finally lets the tears fall.

***

Tessa wakes up. Before she even opens her eyes, she knows she’s back in her apartment, in the familiar sheets, in the familiar bed. There’s no Scott, no Sophie. They’re a maybe and a could’ve been. Tessa shifts to her side and curls inwards, the ache in her chest threatening to drown her.

She wishes that it wasn’t a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes I named him Richard because he's a dICK
> 
> I promise there'll be a happy ending. (hopefully, eventually)


	2. All these possibilities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. Thank you so much to anyone who's taken the time to read my humble little fic, and for all the hits and the kudos and the comments and the bookmarks. Words can't express how much you mean to me.
> 
> Also, a little freak-out moment (feel free to skip but I just need a place to squee): I woke up this morning and went to check @rainy-sunshine's tumblr for any new headcanons as one does. (I am absolute trash for them, can you tell?) But I found the second-best thing.
> 
> They talked about my fic? And said it's awesome? It was four in the morning where I live so I had to keep quiet because I couldn't wake anyone else up. But it feels like my greatest achievement ever. @rainy-sunshine, if you're reading this, it has been an absolute honour to bring your headcanons to life. I hope I don't disappoint.
> 
> So anyway, that motivated me to smash out another chapter. Hope you enjoy!

Tessa had always thought running was a perfect distraction. The repeated strides and the repeated breaths usually focused her mind and funnelled it away from whatever problem she had, whether it was an issue with one of her fashion collaborations or an (all-too-often) fight with Richard.

(It used to be skating. Sometimes, she’ll drive to a rink and skate on her own, but she keeps on turning to someone who’s not there, keeps on reaching for a hand that doesn’t exist, that it doesn’t happen often.)

But not this morning.

This morning, she can’t shake the remnants of the dream she had last night. The thing with dreams is that they come back to you in broken fragments, bits and pieces coming back to you at different times. She had woken up this morning still feeling Sophie’s soft cheek in the nerve-endings of her fingers. She had gone to the stove and pulled out a pan, not realising she had cooked pancakes until she had slid them onto a plate.

She remembers strong arms around her waist, a laugh. She doesn’t know whether it’s from her dream last night, or an actual memory.

She runs faster, harder, anything to get away from the thoughts that have latched onto her and refuse to let go.

***

She goes to bed that night. Doesn’t let the dream from the night before to cross her mind. (But it does, over and over again.) She closes her eyes, sleeps, and dreams.

***

Tessa wakes up encircled in someone’s arms. She thinks in any other situation she would’ve screamed. If she was any younger, she might have thought she had gotten so drunk the night before that she can’t remember taking someone home.

But these are sheets she’s felt once before. And the scent of the person wrapped around her is something she’s known for almost all her life.

Tessa knows she’s dreaming again. Scott shifts behind her, his nose nuzzling closer to her neck. One of her hands is atop Scott’s hand that’s resting on her waist. She presses it closer.

“Tessa,” Scott murmurs, “go back to sleep.”

 _I don’t want to_ , she thinks. _When I wake up, it might not be in your arms, and I’m not ready to let go yet._

“I don’t want to,” is all she whispers back.

“We’ll get up then,” Scott says, kissing her neck before rising. He shucks the covers away, and it’s at this point that Tessa realises they’re both naked. She feels her cheeks warm at what her subconscious has implied. Tessa picks up a shirt from the floor and puts it on. It’s Scott’s.

“Y’know T, I thought you’d sleep for longer, ‘cause I thought I tired you out last night,” Scott says. The bloody bastard has the audacity to wink at her.

Part of Tessa flushes at Scott’s implication (of their apparently mind-blowing sex), part of her burns (because of their apparently mind-blowing sex).

Part of her sobs at the realisation of another possibility that she’s lost, a possibility she could’ve had.

Still, in this alternate universe where she was brave enough to chase after Scott, all she wants to do is wipe that shit-eating off Scott Moir’s face.

“Well,” she smirks, “I guess you didn’t tire me out enough, Mr Moir.” Scott pouts. She can’t help but walk over and kiss him lightly. Well, intend to kiss him lightly. Once her lips touch his, he opens up to her and kisses her thoroughly. It’s dizzying and feels all-too-real, as if it’s actually happened in another place, in another timeline. She pulls away first, murmuring, “I’m gonna check on Sophie.”

She doesn’t realise she’s thought about their daughter until she’s said it. She panics for a moment. Is this the same dream from the night before? Is this the same Scott who cooked her pancakes for breakfast?

(It scares her to realise how quickly she’s grown used to this alternate reality of a family with Scott.)

“Okay,” he says the word as their lips are a hair’s width apart, and she can feel the shape of the letters before she hears them. He draws back more, but still keeps his arms around her, “Oh, and Tessa? It’s Mr Virtue-Moir.” His grin is kind of blinding when he says it. He pulls her in close again, and whispers in her ear, “I love you so much, and I’m the luckiest husband in the world.”

 _Husband_ , Tessa thinks as she walks across the hallway to Sophie’s nursery. _Scott Moir—no, Scott Virtue-Moir—is my husband._

Sophie’s awake when she walks in the nursery. “Good morning, Sophia,” Tessa bends down to carry her daughter, gently cradling her. “How is my beautiful daughter today?” Sophie blinks at Tessa, then giggles as Tessa tickles her tummy.

Tessa’s heart clenches at the sound. She hugs Sophie closer to her chest and wills the tears not to fall.

She steps out of the nursery. She notices picture frames adorning the walls of the hallway, almost covering them completely.

The ones closest to Sophie’s nursery are pictures of Sophie, tiny and red-faced. Then, she spots photos of her and Scott as little kids, photos of her and Scott through the years competing, photos of Olympic podiums.

But there are also photos she doesn’t recognise. One of Scott dipping her backwards as he kisses her nose, of them underneath the Eiffel tower with her head resting in the crook of his shoulder as she grins at the camera but he’s gazing at her, of two hands intertwined, one resting on top of the other wearing a ring on the fourth finger.

The one that she lingers on is one of the larger photographs. She and Scott are holding hands, their foreheads pressed together. She’s wearing a flowing white gown, more beautifully exquisite than anything she can remember seeing. He’s decked out in a black suit. She can’t see their faces, but she can feel the burgeoning promises that those two people made on the day that photo was taken.

Tessa turns away quickly. She doesn’t think she can handle looking at that photo any longer, another reminder of a future that she’s lost. She makes her way to the kitchen, Sophie’s head nestled against her neck.

Scott’s once again at the stove, humming something softly. As Tessa and Sophie walk into the kitchen, he turns around, as if he sensed them there. “My girls!” he says. He takes the poached eggs out and places them on slices of toast (‘the Tessa Special!’, he grandly announces later, when he presents her with the plate) before turning off the stove and walking towards them. He holds out his arms, prompting Tessa to give Sophie to him.

He peppers Sophia’s face with kisses, and cradles her close to him. “So-phi-a,” he singsongs as Sophie giggles. Tessa leans on the kitchen counter, watching them. Over the years that she’d spent skating with Scott, his ready affection for children and his natural affinity with them had made her certain that he would make an excellent father. Her subconscious’ decision to parade this in front of her eyes is a concrete example of what she’d always known deep in her heart.

In her actual reality, the one that she’ll eventually wake up to, she thinks of that Scott. Thinks of the family he might have by now, the daughter whose face he kisses each morning, the wife who gets all of him, every day. It’s not Sophie, and it’s not her.

She thinks of their wedding photo in the hallway upstairs, and can’t do anything to stop the tear that slides down her cheek. She quickly wipes it away, but not before Scott notices.

“Tessa,” he murmurs worriedly, holding Sophie in one arm, so his other hand can reach out and rub his thumb gently underneath Tessa’s eyes, catching another tear.

“I’m fine,” Tessa tries to say, her voice cracking, “I’m just—I’m just really happy.” Scott looks at her, a question half-formed on his lips, so she rambles. “Just—Just seeing you and Sophie reminds me how—how lucky I am,” Tessa pauses and tries to breathe, but it comes out shaky. “It reminds me how lucky I am, to be your wife and to be Sophie’s mother.”

As she says it, Tessa realises she’s never spoken truer words.

Scott moves closer to her and hugs her tight. They breathe together for several moments. Tessa lets go first, saying, “We should eat breakfast before it gets cold.” Scott kisses her temple before letting go, transferring Sophie to Tessa’s arms. Scott makes Sophie’s breakfast, an assortment of mashed vegetables. They eat in quiet, but it’s warm and comforting.

Later that morning, as Sophie naps, Tessa lingers in front of their wedding photo again, reaching out to touch the glass of the frame. She feels Scott approach her, and she leans back instinctively just as he reaches her, his arms automatically going around her waist, his chin resting on her shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, just waits for her to speak.

“Scott,” Tessa begins, her fingertip still touching the glass, over where the Tessa and Scott in the photo are holding hands, “do you—do you ever wonder if there’s a universe out there where we didn’t end up together?” She tries and fails to keep her voice steady.

Scott doesn’t say anything at first, but Tessa senses him thinking. “I know,” he starts, each syllable soft and slow, “that there isn’t a universe where I’m not in love with you, and I want to believe, that in any universe, I would fight any obstacle to make sure that you know that.”

Tessa thinks of her reality. _But why didn’t you fight for me?_

“Unless…” Scott continues, and she turns so that she’s facing him, “I thought you’d be happier without me. Then I would’ve let you go. Because I’d always put your happiness above mine.” His eyes are squeezed shut, and she kisses away the dampness that have gathered at the creases of his eyelids.

He pulls her in closer, and places his forehead against hers. “But Tessa, you gotta know,” Scott breathes, “that if I let you go, it would’ve been the most fucking painful thing I’ve ever done.” Tessa doesn’t stop the onslaught of tears that come. They stand there for what feels like forever.

***

When Tessa wakes up alone in her own bed in her apartment, she aches at losing Scott and Sophie again. But she can’t help but feel that during the hours that she dreams, she feels the happiest she’s felt in a long, long time. It’s a painful kind of happiness, but a kind of happiness nonetheless.

In fragments, she remembers Scott’s words. _“Unless…I thought you’d be happier without me. Then I would’ve let you go. Because I’d always put your happiness above mine.” “But Tessa, you gotta know, that if I let you go, it would’ve been the most fucking painful thing I’ve ever done.”_

And now she knows why Scott didn’t comment when she started dating Richard, why he didn’t fight her when he saw the engagement ring on her finger, why he smiled throughout her wedding day, why he jokingly batted away suggestions that he should dance with Tessa.

 _He thought I was happy_ , she thinks.

She’d always thought he could never get anything wrong about her, but she now knows that he got one thing completely wrong.

_He didn’t know I was in love with him._

Tessa had always thought that he’d known how she felt about him, the width and breadth and depth of how much she loves him, but that he had kindly ignored it because he didn’t feel the same way. He loved her, she knew, but not in the way she loved him. And she thought she could bear it, and could learn to love another.

She's failed on both fronts.

She picks up her phone, scrolls through the contacts and presses on a name she hasn’t texted or called or emailed or anything in years. She opens a new message to him, and her thumbs type out an innocuous message.

_Hi Scott, it’s Tessa._

Her thumb hovers over the send button.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, does she press send or not? Asking myself because I haven't made up my mind.


	3. hopes in our hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there. If you're still reading my humble little fic, you have all my love and gratitude. I haven't updated this fic in over a month and I am so, so sorry. I've slogged my way through exams, and that's all done now, so I hope to have more time over the next couple of days to work on this fic.
> 
> Hope you enjoy, <3

Tessa presses the send button.

_Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. What have I just done?_ Her heart pounds so loudly she fears it will leave her body. (Then again, she thinks she lost her heart a long time ago anyway, gave it away to a boy with a blinding smile.) She drops her phone on the bed and hugs her legs, pressing her forehead to her knees. She forces herself to breathe. She knows this was the right thing to do. That after assuming all the wrong things for far too long, it’s up to her to take the first step to mend the gaping chasm between her and Scott.

That doesn’t stop her from feeling like she’s about to throw up.

When she feels that she’s calmed down enough, she picks up her phone with shaky hands and peeks at the screen.

_Message failed to send. The number has been disconnected._

She lets her head fall back against her bedroom wall with a thud. _Fuck._

***

She keeps on dreaming about Scott, about Sophie, about the house that’s feeling more like home than her own apartment. It’s both easier and harder as each night passes. It becomes easier to fit herself into this future with Scott and Sophie, as if she’s the last puzzle piece that’s pressed into place, finishing the perfect picture as effortlessly as breathing.

It becomes harder to spend idyllic mornings hearing Sophie’s melodious laugh, to sink into Scott’s arms and tangle her fingers in his hair, when she knows it’ll end. And she never knows when it will. Tessa fears that every second that passes when she’s with them will be her last.

She knows she’s been distracted at work. She’s lost count how many times someone tried to refocus her attention over the past week as she’s been collaborating on designs, doesn’t have enough fingers to count each time she’s nodded or made an affirmative sound without really knowing what was asked.

Now, it’s late, and she’s curled up on her couch with a blanket tucked around her knees. She’s holding a battered copy of _Pride and Prejudice._ It’s open to a random page but she doesn’t see the words.

(She dreamt last night that Scott had read it to her and Sophie, as she leaned into his side, his arm wrapped around her. Sophie was in her lap, eyes fixated on Scott as if she was listening intently. 

_“‘Elizabeth’s spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr Darcy to account for his having ever fallen in love with her,”_ Scott had read, _“‘How could you begin?’ said she. ‘I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?’_

Here, Scott had tilted her chin upward, gazed into her eyes, and without reading from the pages, had finished, _“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”)_

Her phone buzzes. For a moment, her heart drops, thinking it’s—

Then she remembers that that message failed when she tried to send it. (She had stared at her phone that morning wondering whether it was the universe’s way of telling her that it just wasn’t meant to be.)

It’s Jordan. _hey tess. is it ok 2 call?_ The phone rings anyway as she reads the text.

“Hey, Jordan.”

“Hey, Tess. How’ve you been holding up?” Tessa can see her sister’s worried expression in her mind. She was the first person she called after the mess with Richard.

“I’ve—I’ve been okay.”

There’s a pause on the line. “Tess.” That one syllable is loaded with questions, stacked on top of each other. Tessa doesn’t know how to answer without it all crashing down.

She tries to think of an answer. _I’ve been having dreams of a family with Scott, where I have a daughter called Sophie. And it’s the happiest I’ve felt in a long, long time. I never want to wake up._

“I saw Scott,” is all she replies.

Jordan doesn’t say anything again. Tessa wonders if Jordan’s thinking of the years where Tessa never mentioned his name, not even in passing.

“So, how was he?” Tessa can hear the forced nonchalance in her sister’s voice.

“I didn’t exactly talk to him. I kind of, uh, ran out of the coffee shop as soon as I could?”

“Oh, Tessie. Of course, you did,” Jordan says fondly, although Tessa can picture her sister face-palming.

“I freaked out, Jordan! I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think I could handle seeing him. Not after—not after all this time.”

“How are you feeling, then? Have you seen him again?”

“No. I haven’t. I haven’t been back there in a while.” Tessa stops for a moment. “Jordan, I—I miss him.”

“I know, Tess. I know.” Neither of them say anything for a while.

Jordan’s the first to break the silence. “Say, Tess, you wanna hear a funny story about work the other day? God, this guy was just really, really rude…”

Tessa lets Jordan ramble, allowing the comforting sound of her sister’s voice distract her. She’s thankful that her sister knows when to change the subject. She knows it’s not the last time that her sister will ask about Scott, but it’s the last for today.

***

Tessa finds herself in the coffee shop the next day. Her fingers tap hurriedly away at the keys of her laptop, answering emails, finalising schedules, messaging sponsors, coordinating with her colleagues. Her sketchbook lies closed on the table, in case a design flits through her mind and she needs to capture it.

She doesn’t know how long she plans to stay here at this table, tucked away in a corner, but providing enough scope for her to see every patron that enters and lingers.

(She knows who she’s looking for, but she’ll never admit it out loud.)

She pauses to sip her coffee, wrapping her fingers timidly around the steaming mug. She peers over the top of the mug, eyes darting around at the quietness of the café. Her heart skips a beat whenever she glances at a head of dark, curling hair, whenever her eyes catch at the profile of someone whose nose slopes in a way that’s all-too-familiar.

She thinks it’s probably been hours since she settled in this morning, but it feels like only seconds have transpired, but then again it maybe feels like a century. Half of her, the logical, analytical half, thinks that she should go. That it’s no use waiting for something that she chose to leave behind. That if nothing’s happened now, nothing ever will, and maybe life is just meant to turn out this way.

But then there’s the other half of her, the half of her that she’s tried to shield from the rest of the world that has always felt too much and hoped too much. And it’s this part of her that anchors her to her seat, that whenever she contemplates going, an ache in her chest blooms, thinking, _What if he walks in only a moment after I walk away?_

And so she stays.

A giggling sound catches her attention. When she looks up, she sees Sophie and Charlotte enter the café. Charlotte sees her and smiles. Tessa gives her a small wave and gestures to the other seats at her table. Charlotte pushes Sophia’s stroller towards her.

“Hi Tessa,” Charlotte greets her, bending down to take Sophie out of the stroller, before sitting back against the cushioned seat. Charlotte gives a drawn-out sigh.

“Long day?” Tessa asks. Sophie’s hand reaches out towards her and she instinctively reaches out as well. Sophie wraps her hand around her finger.

“Yeah, and a long night. Sophie here didn’t stop crying, did you, baby?” Charlotte’s tone is gently teasing. “Tessa, would you mind just holding onto her for a few minutes?”

“Sure,” Tessa replies automatically, the people-pleaser in her unable to say no to someone asking for a favour. Charlotte’s Sophie looks different to the Sophie in her dreams, sky-blue eyes contrasting eyes that become more hazel each night, blonde hair contrasting dark. Still, a part of her sweetly aches as she holds Sophie. “You’ve been giving your mama trouble, haven’t you Sophie?” she says, bouncing her knee up and down slightly. Sophie’s peals of laughter echo in her ears.

“You’re a saint, Tessa. Thank you so much.” Charlotte looks like she’s melted into the cushions. “Usually my husband helps me, but he’s away on a work trip at the moment.” The look of adoration on Charlotte’s face as she spoke of her husband tugged at something in Tessa’s heart.

For as long as they’d been married, she’d never looked at Richard in that way.

(But maybe, she can think of someone else who she did look at with that same adoration, from an era blurred by time, a hazy wisp of a memory, a missed possibility that resurfaces in her dreams every night.)

She continues to hold Sophie, as Charlotte gets up to order a coffee, muttering something about the necessity of caffeine. When she gets back, the three of them sit in companionable quiet.

As the sky begins to turn rosy, signalling the end of another day, Charlotte tells Tessa that she and Sophie are going to head out. When the two of them have gone, Tessa opens up her sketchbook and doodles a design for a baby onesie, like the one Sophie was wearing. She lingers in the café until the sky has turned dark.

Eventually, she closes her laptop, snaps her sketchbook shut and packs everything in her bag. She slips it onto her shoulder and brings her mug to the counter. Her eyes wander to the tip jar again, on the two pairs of figure-skates, and she drops several coins in. Her fingers trace the skates before she turns away.

She tugs her coat closer as she opens the café door, preparing for the bite of the cold air, closes her eyes as the chill settles on her exposed skin and walks into someone—

For a split second, her heart jumps to her throat as her balance shifts off-kilter, bracing herself for the impact of the hard pavement, blindly reaching her hands outwards—

But strong hands catch firmly at her waist, bringing her upwards. The person’s gasp reaches her ears the instant as her nose registers his scent, the scent that envelops her dreams each night.

She opens her eyes.

“Tessa.”

“Scott.”


	4. when we meet again

Once, when she was younger and still pursuing gymnastics alongside dance and skating, Tessa had tried executing a complicated combination but had messed it up and had fallen straight on her back. She remembers having the wind knocked out of her chest, the clawing struggle to breathe, the dizziness.

This feels exactly like that.

His name had tumbled from her lips in a quiet exhale, the instance of recognition sending her poor heart beating at a speed that was too, too fast. _Scott_.

Each of her senses seems impossibly heightened. His hands at her waist almost burn through her many layers, her fingertips digging into the texture of the fabric of his coat where her hands clutch his forearms. The sounds of their breaths overlap like ripples in a pond disturbed by drops of rain, their paces overtaking each other and seemingly unable to sync.

It’s this stinging thought that pushes her to a standing position, her fingers curling inwards into her palms as she takes a step back. If she can feel pricking at the corners of her eyes, she tells herself it’s because of the cold.

Her eyes had never left his.

There might have been a time when she could glance at his face and had known exactly what he was thinking, knows that their wordless conversations were borderline-infamous in the ice-skating world, but those days were long gone. She looks at him and the blankness that greets her leaves her colder than the chilly wind surrounding them.

“Tessa—hi.” There’s a whisper of a smile forming on his lips, but it’s so far from the goofy grins that she remembers. It’s so far from the fond smiles tucked into her neck that she dreams about. It’s a smile that you give to a passing acquaintance, someone you don’t actively dislike but know you probably won’t see again.

“Hi,” she replies. Her voice is somehow steady.

There’s this distance between them, this yawning chasm formed by too much time and too many miles spent apart. Tessa knows a lot of it is her fault. That after her wedding, their text messages and phone calls slowly dwindled as she failed to reply back. That she conveniently avoided him and his family anytime she was invited over for the holidays.

She doesn’t know how long they stand there on the sidewalk in front of the café door. It’s both a heartbeat and an eternity.

Her gaze flickers to the cozy interior of the shop. “Their almond milk cappuccinos are good,” she murmurs, in an effort to fill in the stilted silence.

“You and your fancy drinks,” his smile turns fond for a split-second, reaching his eyes for a moment. It’s gone by the next time Tessa blinks. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He turns to open the door and walks in. He hesitates before glancing back at her, “It’s good seeing you, Tessa.”

“You too,” she says, as the door falls to a close.

Tessa walks back to her apartment. When she enters, she slips off her shoes, arranging them neatly on the shoe rack, and hangs her coat. She drops her bag at her desk, taking her laptop out and shelving her sketchbook. She wanders to the kitchen and finds leftovers to heat up. She gets ready for bed.

She slips under the covers, curls on her side. Dampness slides down her cheeks as she shuts her eyes. Scott’s ghost of a smile haunts her thoughts as she falls asleep.

***

When she next opens her eyes, it’s in the scratchier sheets of the bed that she shares with the Scott in her dreams. She rolls over, expecting to find him—

—but it’s empty, the sheets cool under her skin.

Tessa sits upright. She knows, because this is how her dreams of the past week have gone, that if Scott’s not in bed with her, then he’s either in the kitchen or in the nursery or in another part of their home. But this morning (or technically, this night), fear creeps into her heart, remembering the distant look in Scott’s eyes at the coffee shop.

She goes downstairs (after checking on Sophie, who’s still peacefully sleeping) on the brink of a run, and finds Scott in the kitchen standing in the kitchen, preparing their breakfast, humming a little off-key. It’s a similar sight that’s greeted her several times over the past couple of nights when she dreams. She realises that she’s gotten used to this routine domesticity. She thinks of the distant smile of the Scott in her reality, and the enormity of what she’s lost hits her like a punch in the gut.

She stands frozen as Scott turns around. It’s barely a millisecond when he registers the look on her face and he rushes towards her.

“T? What’s wrong? Did you have a bad dream?” He takes both her hands in one of his, pressing them to his chest as he wraps his other arm around her.

Tessa feels the fear seep away as she stands in Scott’s embrace. She nods against his chest and mumbles, “Yeah.” Except it’s not a bad dream. It’s her reality, but maybe, for now, she can pretend it’s not a nightmare she brought on herself.

Scott rubs his hand up and down her back, breathing slowly. Tessa matches her breathing to his. She resolves to never take this for granted, for however long she’ll be having these dreams.

“Do you want to talk about it?” He whispers against her hair. Tessa nods again.

Scott pulls away. “Can I carry you, T?” Tessa thinks of the first time she had to do a lift with Scott. How much trust she had to give to him to not let her fall. It’s a question of trust, and there’s only ever been one answer for her.

“Yes.”

Scott lifts her in the first lift they ever learned. One of his arms supporting her back and the other under her knees, both of her arms wrapped tight around his neck. He carries her over to their couch and sits. She shifts so that she’s settled in his lap, curled up in his chest. Scott wraps his arms around her and holds her hand, quietly waiting for Tessa to gather her thoughts.

“I had a dream,” Tessa begins, “that—” _that we never had this, that I never had you_ “—that we never got this.” Tessa weakly gestures between the two of them with her hand. “I dreamt that I saw you and the way you looked at me was just—empty. It hurt so much, Scott. You were so close, but you seemed so far away.”

There are tears falling from her eyes. When she looks up at Scott, she notices a similar dampness gathering in his. She reaches to brush his tears away, her other hand gripping even tighter on Scott’s.

“I’m here,” he whispers, a phrase that’s followed her throughout their numerous competitions, a phrase of reassurance and comfort and promise, a phrase that she hasn’t heard in years and didn’t think ever would again.

Tessa reaches up to kiss him. “You’re here,” she murmurs, lips still against his.

***

Tessa wakes up slowly. These dreams of Scott come back to her in achingly vivid fragments and she thinks she can still feel her hand intertwined with his, his murmured “ _I’m here_.” still playing in her mind. She’s torn between being thankful for her subconscious’ imagined comforts and the desire to scream at the unfairness of it all. Not that it’s unfair at all really, because it’s her decisions that have led to her reality, this reality where the only place where Scott holds her hand is in her dreams.

And she realises, that as much as she was—is—(is it in the past or the present? She doesn’t know anymore)—in love with Scott, she misses her best friend more. She severed one of the most important relationships in her life in an effort to shield herself from hurt, but she guesses the joke’s on her because it hurts more to know that she’ll probably never get that friendship back.

She sees Scott’s closed-off gaze from last night. She shoves that thought away in the corner of her mind in the box labelled with his name, and gets up.

***

After her morning run, she’s about to stop by the café as she has become accustomed to, but the memory of last night gives her pause. There’s a phantom sting in her chest as she stops by the door. But she’s Tessa Virtue and she will get over this so she steels herself and goes inside. She lines up amidst the throng of people, tugging her earphones out.

When she gets to the front of the line, she orders an almond milk cappuccino and was about to reach into her pocket to pay when the owner of the coffee shop, a charming lady with a faint English accent pokes her head out from the back of the shop, “Miss Tessa, is that you?”

“Yes, Elaine, it’s me,” Tessa smiles back. Elaine learned the names of her regular patrons, engaging them in conversation if she had the time.

“Samuel, Miss Tessa’s drink is already paid for,” Elaine turned to the barista, “I'll make her drink. Almond milk cappuccino, is it not, my darling?”

“Yes, Elaine, but, uh, who’s paid for my drink?” Tessa moves away from the cash register and follows along Elaine’s path as she makes Tessa’s drink.

“Ah, Miss Tessa, that’s for me to know and for you to find out,” Elaine chuckles, “I will say that he was very adamant about not letting me tell you who he is.”

“You know who it is?”

Elaine merely smiles at her. She turns back to finish making Tessa’s coffee.

“One almond milk cappuccino for Miss Tessa,” Elaine hands Tessa her coffee. Tessa murmurs a quick thanks. “And—hold on a sec, he also told me to give you this.” Elaine brandishes a folded piece of paper from inside her apron, miraculously unstained.

Tessa takes the folded piece of paper, forcing a smile. Is someone trying to hit on her? She blanches at the thought. “Thanks, Elaine. Have a good day.”

She sits down at a table. Usually, by now, she’s inhaled half her coffee, but it seems to burn her hand today in a way that’s more than just the temperature. She places the coffee cup down on the tabletop.

She takes the piece of paper that’s folded in half and turns it over, and sees a scribbled ‘T’ written at the corner and she starts becoming genuinely nervous. They know who she is—are they a stalker? Tessa can feel Elaine’s shrewd gaze on her.

Might as well do it here, where there’s safety in numbers. God, what if they’re lurking around waiting to strike? _Tessa, breathe_ , she tells herself.

She opens the note.

_Tessa,_ it reads. In a scrawled handwriting almost as familiar to herself as her own. Tessa gasps.

_Sorry for the awkward meeting. It took me by surprise, is all—it’s been years since I last saw you, eh? It really is good to see you, T! Hope we can catch up again soon._

_-Scott_

_P.S. To really say how sorry I am, I asked Elaine if I could pay for your next drink._

_P.P.S Did you see the art I requested for your coffee?_

Tessa lifts off the lid of her coffee cup, thankful she hadn’t drunk it yet. Floating in the foam are a pair of figure skates.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Figure skates coffee art looks like this: https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/515521488566866844/
> 
> School's about to restart for me, so I am pre-emptively apologising for how long it'll take for me to get the next chapter out. (Sorry)


	5. second chances

There’s a sort of warmth that infuses Tessa’s body even before she’s taken a sip of the coffee. Somehow, those two little figure skates makes her chest a little bit lighter, her breath filling her lungs a little bit easier. There’s a tightness that loosens, a tension that softens.

She brings the cup to her lips and the coffee seems the sweetest that it’s ever been as it seeps onto her tongue. Tessa places the cup down and traces her fingertips over the bumps and ridges of Scott’s handwriting.The words he’s written seem like the words he’d have said to her a lifetime ago, sweet and thoughtful and with a half-smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

There’s a dissonance between the Scott she literally bumped into last night and the Scott that has written her this quickly scribbled note, but the voice in her head that’s chastising her into thinking this is too good to be true is drowned out by the feeling of hope that is slowly blooming in her heart.

Tessa looks up to see Elaine bustling towards her, a look of concern on her gentle face. “Are you alright, darling?” Elaine asks.

Tessa nods, her gaze dropping back onto the small piece of paper.

“He’s a good man, then?”

 _The best I’ve ever known_ , Tessa thinks. “An old friend, Elaine,” she says instead.

Elaine pulls out another piece of paper from her apron. “Then I suppose it’s alright to give you this, Miss Tessa.” Tessa reaches out to take it, confused. Elaine continues, “But you tell me if he ever does you wrong, alright?”

When she opens this piece of paper, an unfamiliar string of numbers greets her. Tessa looks up and sees Elaine’s kind smile. Elaine continues, “But something tells me that he’ll try his hardest not to.”

***

When Tessa gets home, she feels the small, torn piece of paper like a minute flame in the pocket of her leggings. Her skin seems to ache where it sits near her thigh, and she doesn’t know if it’s from anticipation or anxiety or dread.

She stands by her kitchen counter, propping her hip by the cool marble. She pulls her phone out from her pocket and shakily taps the phone app. She dips her hand in her pocket. Tessa feels the sharp edges of the papers that Elaine passed on to her. She pulls out the smaller piece, and takes a moment to look at Scott’s phone number. He gave it to Elaine to pass on to her, so he must want her to have it, right?

But part of Tessa worries that this tentative restart of their friendship feels too good to be true. That Scott’s changed his mind about bridging the chasm between him. That he’s regretted his decision to reach out to her again.

Tessa doesn’t think she’d be able to bear to find out if this was the truth.

Still, Tessa thinks back to that morning where she’d mustered fragments of her courage and haphazardly pieced them together to send Scott that text. That morning which ended in failure and the thought that fate decided Tessa and Scott are better apart.

This feels like a second chance.

So she types in Scott’s new number into the contact she could never bring herself to delete, even through years of silences that she knows is her own fault.

She opens a new message, types in ‘Hi Scott. It’s Tessa.’, and presses send.

This time, the message goes through.

Tessa doesn’t know whether to sigh in relief or whimper in anxiety.

***

She tries to keep busy for the rest of the day, leaves her phone facedown on the kitchen counter. She tries to tell herself she’s not waiting for the telltale ping of a new message. She silenced all her social media notifications, justifying that it’s so she can focus on her work.

(She’s always been a good liar, at least when lying to herself.)

She’s got her sketchbook opened and is surprisingly deep in creative thought, has pages and papers and spreads open of various clothing sketches. The most liberating part of separating from Richard is having the freedom to stretch out her creative and business wings, so to speak, able to pursue everything that he had frowned upon.

She had been able to reconnect with companies through old contracts, who were still honoured to collaborate with the Tessa Virtue. Mathieu had happily answered her call when she contacted him for advice and suggested for her to work on him with designs for skating costumes in the future, once she’d found her footing.

After piling her hair in a messy bun atop her head, she fiddles with one of the strands as she touches the tip of her pencil to her lips, lost in thought.

She almost misses the ping of her phone.

Tessa’s stomach drops at the sound, a sound that usually she wouldn’t give a second thought to. But this sound is loaded with expectations and the possibility of disappointment.

She stops for a moment. Eyes her kitchen counter from her spot at her dining table. She stands up to stretch, rolling out her neck and wrists. She takes a few steps towards it.

She gingerly picks up her phone, leaves it upside down. 

She quickly flips it.

 

_Scott Moir    11.23 am_

_Hi Tess. You got my note from Elaine then?_

 

Tessa’s heart pounds in her chest, the rhythm thrumming throughout her body. She takes a deep breath to calm her nerves. It’s just Scott.

But then again, she supposes he’s never been _just_ Scott.

(He’s been her best friend, her partner, the love of her life and thinking about this loss makes her heart ache.)

Tessa’s certainty about fate has never been absolute, but if fate seems to be offering her a second chance, then she’ll gladly take it.

She types out her response and sends the text through.

 

_Tessa Virtue   11.26 am_

_I did. Thank you so much for the drink_

 

She wavers before sending the next one. 

 

_Tessa Virtue   11.28 am_

_The art in my coffee was beautiful_

 

Scott’s response is almost immediate.

 

_Scott Moir  11.28 am_

_So glad you liked it T_

 

_Scott Moir  11.29 am_

_You’re right their coffee was good_

 

As Tessa types her response to Scott, affirming the wonderful café, she can’t help but feel that talking to him is as natural as breathing. She can’t help but remember how awkward and stilted they were when they bumped into each other, but just like the note, Scott’s texts infuse her being with a beaming sense of hope.

There’s a pause between their texts, but Tessa finds she doesn’t feel the anxiety she’d thought she’d be feeling during this whole interaction. Regardless of the years where they didn’t communicate due to her lack of courage, Scott’s still willing to repair their friendship.

 _Just their friendship_ , Tessa repeats to herself, refusing to entertain any thoughts of the fragments of her dreams where she and Scott are decidedly more than friends.

 

_Scott Moir   11.36 am_

_So Tess I know you might be busy_

 

_Scott Moir  11.36 am_

_But do you think you’d be willing to come to the cafe to catch up?_

 

Tessa’s breath hitches in her throat.

 

_Scott Moir  11.37 am_

_I’ll pay for the coffee_

 

Scott did always seem to know, without even trying, the quickest way to her heart

 

_Tessa Virtue  11.38 am_

_Sure Scott. Just text me when you’re free. I’ll see if I can make it._

*** 

They decide to meet up the next morning, their schedules somehow lining up to be both miraculously free. Tessa wakes up with the feeling of Scott’s lips still pressed against her neck in her dream. She attempts to shake the feeling off, scared she’ll make their meet-up awkward and uncomfortable.

And that’s one of the last things she wants.

She dresses warmly, tugging on her favourite coat and her favourite pair of boots, and tucks both notes from Scott in the inside pocket of her coat, the one close to her heart. Grabbing her purse, she briskly makes her way out into the crisp London air.

She walks towards the coffee shop, letting the warmth of the sun soothe her. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t nervous, but she’d also be lying if she said she wasn’t a little bit hopeful. The truth is that she’s missed Scott. More than words can describe, more than she’d ever cared to admit to herself.

She thinks of the years they’d spent by each other’s side, in each others’ pockets, and can’t help but wonder if—

—maybe, possibly—

—he’s missed her too.

Tessa ignores her internal question. Tries not to dwell on the possibility that would—maybe, possibly—shatter her fragile and hopeful heart. She slows as she nears the corner where the coffee shop is. She takes a few deep breaths as she nears the entrance door. She closes her eyes for a moment.

When she opens them, Scott’s gentle smile greets her.

“Hi Tess.”

This time, it reaches his eyes. This time, it seems like he is actually pleased to see her. It’s not the same unrestrained blinding grin from before but—baby steps. Both of them pause before the coffee shop door.

“Hi Scott.”

He opens the door for her. “After you,” he says, gesturing her in.

Tessa thanks him, and he steps in after her and they line up at the counter. There’s not many patrons around, and Tessa immediately spots Elaine out of the corner of her eye. She knows that she’s watching the pair of them closely. As they stand in line, he stands close to her. Not as close as from before or in her dreams (she flushes at the remnants of her dream from the night before, where no one would be able to dispute their _closeness_ ) but close enough that she feels his solid warmth beside him.

She tries to quickly glance at him, only to find him already gazing at her, hazel eyes soft. She quickly looks away, afraid to get lost in them. She wonders if she’s imagining the barely-perceptible sag of his shoulders. She must be.

It’s not long before they’re called up to the counter to be served.

“What do you want, T? I did promise you I’d pay for your coffee,” Scott says as they go up to order their drinks.

Tessa remembers the text, but says, “Oh no, Scott, I’ll pay for my own. It’s fine.” She reaches into her purse for her money, but she feels Scott’s hand covering hers.

Tessa’s breath hitches in her throat. She wonders if she can feel her pulse race beneath his touch.

“No, Tess, I promised right? If you want you can buy us drinks the next time we catch up,” Scott flushes, averting his gaze, seemingly embarrassed, “only if—if you want to meet up again.”

Tessa’s heart aches at the thought of Scott not realising she’d always want to be in his company. She resolves to put in as much effort as she needs to, and more besides, to mend their friendship.

“I’ll buy the drinks next time then,” she smiles. Impulsively, she turns her hand over, slotting her pinky in between his index and middle fingers.

They haven’t done this in so long, and for a fleeting second Tessa wonders if she’s overstepped. But Scott’s grip tightens.

When she looks up, the grin that greets her is blinding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is anyone out there still?
> 
> A thousand apologies for how long it's taken this chapter to get out. I'm so sorry, but I hope the wait was worth it? Maybe?
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!
> 
> (Apologising in advance because I know the next chapter will take another century knowing me)


	6. two lost souls finding their way home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can y'all believe I actually have an update? I've actually finished two lots of exams and finished high school (this is the way the school year works in my part of the world) so I have a summer of nothing to do. I would love to say this will make me update more frequently, but I've learned not to make any promises I can't keep. Nevertheless, I intend to do a lot more writing.
> 
> If you're still reading my humble little fic after all this time, I love and appreciate you, so, so much.

Elaine clears her throat at the counter. Scott turns towards her, breaking his gaze from Tessa’s. His fingers loosen their grip and eventually let go. At first, Tessa went to tighten her fingers around his slackening ones but she catches herself before she can. She remembers that he’s not hers to hold onto. 

She watches him charm Elaine, watches the way his eyes crease at the corners as he smiles. There’s more lines there than when she saw him last. There’s a part of her that aches wondering who’s made him laugh in the years that they’ve spent apart, but she reminds herself that she was the one who severed contact between the two of them. She thinks of the years, the two decades by each other’s side, when she could confidently proclaim that no one could make him laugh as much as she could.

That’s not her place anymore.

Here and now, her place isn’t by his side, no matter how much her subconscious haunts her with possibilities of the future she could’ve had with him. There’s a quiet corner in her heart that wonders, during some nights as she’s on the precipice of falling asleep, if there was ever a time when, maybe, he might’ve loved her the way she loved him.

_“Unless…I thought you’d happier without me. Then I would’ve let you go. Because I’d always put your happiness above mine.”_

_“But Tessa, you gotta know, that if I let you go, it would’ve been the most fucking painful thing I’ve ever done.”_

They were beautiful words, from a Scott in another universe and another timeline and in her dreams, one where the stars aligned for the two of them. She studies the Scott in front of her, the sloping nose and kind smile. This isn’t that Scott.

But this is the Scott that used to know her like the back of his hand, better than she knows herself, and every other idiom in the English language that encompasses two souls that know each other in the closest possible way.

This is the Scott that used to be her best friend. She allows herself to dream of a future where she slots herself into his life in the same worn niche she used to occupy: his best friend, confidante and partner. But she knows she’s changed and she’s certain he has too, and she knows the edges of her being won’t effortlessly fit in with the shape of his.

She might be his friend, but not his best. He might tell her mundane news of his life, but she won’t be his confidante. She might have been his partner in skating, but she will never be his partner in life.

He didn’t have a ring, she had observed as their fingers had interlaced and pressed together, but that doesn’t rule out the possibility of a lovely woman with kind eyes and a gentle smile who’s waiting for him in their shared home.

She thinks of new roles that she might come to embody, if they heal the brokenness of their friendship. His friend, perhaps his wife’s as well. An aunt to his future children. Children with his eyes, his smile, his warm heart. She thinks of little Sophie in her dreams, thinks of her hazel eyes so like Scott’s. She pictures a baby like Sophie in Scott’s arms, a baby who’s half Scott but not half of her. She pictures a nameless, faceless woman cradling Sophie, as Scott embraces them with fondness and warmth and love.

A whimper or a sob bubbles up her throat. She suppresses it before it could break free. This dream-like future with Scott is not hers to want, not anymore.

“…Tessa?” Her attention snaps towards Scott. He’s looking at her with gentle eyes that seemed to have just asked a question.

“Yes?” she says, warmth rising to her cheeks as she realises that she’d completely zoned out.

“I was just asking what drink you wanted? I know you said the almond milk cappuccinos were good…” Scott trails off, his eyes wandering back to the menu of drinks behind the counter.

Tessa quickly glances at Elaine, who’s learned her order and usually prepares it before she can even greet her ‘Good morning’. She’s serenely silent, a curving smile gracing her face.

“…and I know you liked to drink them back when we were skating,” Scott finishes. He turns to face her again.

Tessa’s heart flutters at the realisation that Scott still remembers one of her many, many coffee orders, but reassures herself that that was a by-product of their friendship and skating partnership. There were many, many things she still remembers about Scott, although her tendency to remember the facets of him was underscored by a kind of affection towards him that’s different from his purely platonic one towards her.

“I’d like that, thank you,” she smiles at him, and his mouth shifts again to his blinding grin.

“I knew I still knew you, Tessa,” he nudges her shoulder teasingly. He places their coffee orders with Elaine and they step off to the side to wait. Neither sensed a need for conversation, and Tessa let herself sink into the comforting silence between them.

Once their names are called, Scott takes both their drinks, ever the gentleman. He tilts his head while looking at Tessa, wordlessly asking her where she wanted them to sit. She leads him to one of the few free tables in the café. She realises, as they both sit down, that this was the same corner she had occupied that day she had hoped to catch a glimpse of him again. As he sits in front of her and slides her coffee towards her, a sort of contentment seeps into her being as she thinks of what she has now was what she yearned for then: the opportunity to mend her friendship with Scott.

Both of them relish a few more moments of silence as they sip from their respective drinks. Scott’s the first to break the silence.

“So, Tessa, how have you been?” He puts his drink down and leans forward on his elbows. His face is open and inviting, and Tessa is struck by a strong sense of home.

“Good,” she says automatically, as she puts her drink down. But she shakes her head, “Actually—” She takes a deep breath. Scott continues to gaze at her softly, waiting for her to find the right words to say. She begins, “I don’t know if you’ve heard about what happened between Richard and me from the tabloids,” she pauses to study Scott’s facial expression and observed that his brow is creased, “but he—he cheated on me with his secretary, so I filed for divorce. So, I guess, it’s been better for me.”

It’s kind of terrifying seeing Scott’s expression darken, like the moon blocking the sun during a total solar eclipse. “No, Tessa—how could he—I thought that was just a rumour—the asshole!” he spits out, “Mom mentioned something about him cheating that she read in a magazine the last time I called her, but I thought that was just a rumour. I didn’t think he was capable of that. I thought—I thought he was going to treat you right.” His voice falters at the last sentence.

Tessa attempts to smile. “I guess, I just wasn’t enough for him,” she comments as she stirs her drink.

“Tessa, no.” Scott grabs her hand in both of his. Tessa’s heart skips a beat. He holds her hand in the warmth of his, and continues, “Don’t ever think that you weren’t enough for him, okay? He was the one who didn’t deserve you. Tessa, you—you deserve the world.” His hazel eyes don’t look away from her green ones, and the deepness of his gaze is overwhelming.

Tessa looks down at her drink and pulls her hand away from his. The loss of contact tugs at her chest. If she had seen his face as she pulled her hand away, she would have seen it somewhat break.

“Thank you,” she whispers, plucking up the courage to meet his eyes again.

“I mean it, Tessa,” he murmurs too. “I thought he would never hurt you, you know? I remember, during your wedding, he looked at you like you were the sun, the moon and the stars.”

Tessa wanted to laugh at that. Scott had always been a romantic at heart. “Scott, I don’t think he’d ever looked at me that way.” She was certain of this. For all the reasons she married Richard, it was never because of fairytale romances or the feeling of soulmates. She married him because she thought it was the logical next step in their relationship. She thought she could have a stable and content marriage with him.

“Oh Tess,” Scott smiled ruefully. The shortened version of her name, the way his tongue lingers on the syllable, flutters Tessa’s pulse, “You were never the best at noticing when people looked at you that way.”

Tessa wonders at who he could possible be referring to. None of her past boyfriends ever did. When they were younger, Scott had been quick to chastise her on her choice of men, citing that none of them would treat her the way she deserved. She knew now that he it was only to look out for her, but back then it frustrated her to no end. She couldn’t fathom who he could be referring to.

She decides to change the subject. “Enough about me, Scott. What about you? What have you been up to?” He looks at her with concern, clearly still worried about her, so she gives him an encouraging smile.

“Well, for the past few years I’ve been helping out at the rink back at home, teaching lessons and coaching there. The classes I love doing the most are with the little ones. Tessa, you should see their determination and their smiles when they get something right…” He rambles on for a while. His passion for teaching skating lights up his face and it warms Tessa’s heart to hear him talk about it. She pictures him with little kids, and ends up the image of him and Sophie from her dreams.

When he finishes speaking, he’s bright and energised and slightly out of breath. It reminds Tessa of what he looked like a few minutes into one of their skating practices.

“That sounds amazing, Scott. It really does,” Tessa pauses before asking the question that played on the edges of her mind, “but, I was wondering, I thought you had considered working with Marie-France and Patch?” Thinking of their former coaches, she was sure that they would have been ecstatic to take Scott under their wing.

Scott chuckles at that, “I did consider it for a while, and I’d talked to them about it, and maybe I might have pursued it if…” He stops there, shaking his head. “Anyway, it felt like the best choice for me was going back home, you know? I don’t regret it.”

_If what?_ Tessa wants to ask. But this restart at their friendship is fragile. Scott hasn’t pushed her to share beyond what she’s comfortable with, although she’s surprised at how much she’s shared with him. Then again, this is Scott. If he hasn’t pushed her, then she wouldn’t push him

“That’s good, Scott. I’m sure you’ve made such a difference in the lives of the kids you teach there. They must love you so much,” she says, and laughs at the way Scott reaches up to scratch his neck and pink blooms in his cheeks, bashful and shy.

“They’re amazing on their own. I’m just there to help them,” he says.

“Because they have an amazing coach.” Tessa slightly raises an eyebrow then, daring her to challenge him.

He laughs at her expression, loud and quick and bright, before ducking his head, “Okay, Tess, you win.” He looks up to meet her eyes, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies, not breaking his gaze. She feels somewhat giddy, but attributes this to winning the argument with Scott. She hides the blooming blush in her cheeks by taking another sip of her drink.

After a few moments, Scott asks, “And you, Tessa? What beautiful, brilliant things have you done with your life?”

Tessa shakes her head, “Nothing beautiful or brilliant. But I’ve been collaborating with a couple of companies that used to sponsor me, y’know, back in the day, designing some things. But that’s only been recently, since I separated from Richard. He didn’t really feel comfortable with me…doing my own work.”

She winces at Scott’s angry expression. “Scott, it—it wasn’t my best decision, staying with him, and following what he demanded of me. I just—I just wanted to make our marriage work.”

“Tessa, it’s not your fault. It was his. No one should have the right to tell the person they love what to do. You’re your own person, Tessa. You should be able to shine as bright as you want to.” Scott’s voice turns soft at the end. “It was the absolute privilege of my life to have stood beside you for two decades watching you shine.”

“Everything I ever accomplished in skating, Scott, I accomplished because you were there right beside me. All my achievements were our achievements.” This time, Tessa’s the first one to grab Scott’s hand. He grips tighter in response.

“Thanks, T,” he whispers. The resurfacing of the old nickname makes her heart ache, tugs her back through a whirlwind of memories of ice rinks and early mornings and kiss-and-cries, of breakfasts in kitchens and late-night movies and a hand that was always in hers. The same hand she’s holding now.

“Anything else going on in your life, Scott?” she asks, not letting go.

He pauses in thought, chewing his lower lip. Tessa tells herself she’s not staring.

“Oh!” he startles, grinning, “I know. Tessa, do you know that feeling of meeting someone new and knowing that they’re meant to be in your life and you were meant to be in theirs?”

Tessa thinks that the first and last time this has happened to her was when she met an outgoing Moir boy with a too-loud personality and kind hazel eyes, one who held her hand and her heart since that first day at the rink and had never let go. She nods.

“Well, it's happened to me. Her name’s Bella, and Tessa, from the moment I looked into her gorgeous eyes, I knew she was meant to be mine and I was meant to be hers.”

If anyone ever asks Tessa about this moment in the future, she will say that her body most definitely did not tense, that her stomach most definitely did not drop, that her heart most definitely did not break. She pulls away again from Scott’s hold, the loss seeming more profound than the last time, under the pretence of sipping from her drink.

She hadn't realised how painful it is to lose something you never really had in the first place, how heart-wrenchingly disappointing to realise you can never have something you told yourself not to hope for.

She tries to smile, but she fears it’s come out more like a grimace. “That’s so lucky, Scott,” she swears her voice breaks but Scott doesn’t seem to notice. She remembers thinking of the lovely nameless, faceless woman as he was ordering their drinks, one who’ll become his wife and the mother of his future children. Well, she wasn’t nameless anymore. “I can’t wait to meet her,” Tessa says and she wishes she wasn’t lying but the sentence is most definitely a lie, rolling heavy from her lips like a boulder that she hopes won’t crash too loudly.

She’s sure she’ll be ready to meet her someday, just not today. She needs to heal her heart first. Please.

“You don’t need to wait, Tessa! Bella’s at home and I’m sure she’d love to meet you too!” Scott’s grin is wide and bright, the corners of his eyes crinkling, “If you’re not too busy, that is.”

There’s a thousand excuses that flit through Tessa’s mind. Work, family, a headache. Scott’s not aware of every single thing in her life the way he used to be, so another lie should go unnoticed.

But Tessa’s resolved to mend their friendship and meeting the woman Scott believes he will spend the rest of his life with is one of those things a good friend does. She wants to be a good friend.

“Sure, Scott. Let’s go,” she smiles, wondering if anyone could hear the sound of her heart slowly cracking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come yell at me in the comments


	7. the steps we take, the choices we make

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's an update...at least the wait wasn't as long as usual? (Did I procrastinate on this by writing other stuff? You bet.)
> 
> If you're still reading this little fic, I love you lots <3

Bella’s a dog.

“Bella’s a dog,” Tessa states. She knows she’s stating the obvious but it’s the only thought that’s passing through her head as she watches Scott nuzzle a golden ball of fur in his arms.

“Hmmm? Yeah? Who’s a good girl? Yes, yes you are,” Bella licks Scott’s hand before letting out a playful bark, “Yeah, Tessa, Bella’s a puppy I adopted from the shelter a few weeks ago.” He turns to look at her and must have noticed the dumbfounded look on her face, “Did you expect a cat? Or a goat?”

“A goat?” Where did he get that idea from?

“Bella the goat sounds perfectly plausible, Tessa. Remember how we used to be called GOATs? Maybe I should’ve gotten a goat when we retired. Oh well, the chance has passed.”

Tessa laughs at Scott’s joke, the sound escaping her in a quick, sharp burst. Scott grins, eyes crinkling, the way he used to be when he was proud to have made her laugh. He continues, “I have my Bella the puppy now. Go say hi to Tessa, Bell. Go on!”

Bella leaps out of Scott’s arms and scampers towards Tessa, barking as she clambers up her legs. Tessa bends down and pats Bella’s fur. Bella looks up at her and Tessa realises that Scott’s right. Her soulful brown eyes are indeed gorgeous. Tessa thought that she’d fallen in love only once in her life, but maybe this will be the second time.

_Or the third, actually,_ she thinks, her mind wandering to Sophie, her beautiful daughter in her dreams.

“You’re beautiful, aren’t you?” Tessa murmurs, as she bends to pick Bella up. Bella barks in agreement before licking Tessa’s cheek.

“Look at that, she likes you already,” Scott chuckles, “Bell, I bet you like Tessa more than me.” Bella barks on cue, as if in agreement, before nuzzling Tessa’s palm. Scott exaggerates an indignant look, putting his hands on his hips and drawing his brows together. However, the grin threatening to break free reveals his amusement at the scene in front of him.

Scott breaks from his faux annoyance and gestures inwards towards his apartment, “Why don’t you come in, Tessa?”

Tessa hesitated. Once upon a time, a long time ago, she would have entered Scott’s home without hesitation. She would have had a spare key that she would have used frequently, for mundane mornings or evenings spent in each other’s quiet company, going over skating practices and music choices or just whatever conversation topics crossed their mind.

She thought she’d hesitated for only a breath or a blink, but it must have been longer because Scott’s arm sags, just a little.

“Unless you’re busy,” he says, looking down at the floor for a second, “I understand if you need to go.” When he looks back up, there’s a dimming light in his eyes.

Tessa steps in, “I’ll stay.” She smiles at the adorable bundle of fur in her arms, “I’d love to get to know Bella a little better.” Scott ducks his head and turns away, but Tessa sees the smile he tried to hide.

Friendship, she tells herself, is the reason why making him smile feels like such a victory.

***

Later, when she’s bundled up in the covers of her bed in her own apartment, she intertwines her fingers and rests them on her stomach, feeling it rise and fall in time with her breaths. She thinks of the hour she spent in Scott’s apartment. It was a weird dichotomy of both newness and familiarity, the sense that this Scott is different from the Scott that she knew, but is still the same.

It was weird being in his space again. It was weird looking around his apartment where she didn’t know where he kept his keys or which cupboard he kept his salt and pepper shakers. There was a time when it was second nature knowing those things. On the table near the door. The upper cupboard to the right of the stove.

But he still had his Maple Leafs decor. He still had photos of all his family, scattered throughout the house. Tucked between a photo of him and Alma and of his nieces and nephews, was a photo of him and her. Not one of them on a podium. Just one of him and her, probably at a Moir family gathering. Tessa had wracked her head for a memory of that particular day, but there were so many that she was at that she can’t pinpoint the moment the photo was taken.

Still, finding that photograph warmed her heart.

The hours of the afternoon seemed to fly by. Tessa spent the majority of it with Bella on her lap, the little bundle of energy making a home of herself in Tessa’s arms.

She’d been unsure of what she and Scott would be like when spending time in each other’s company again, but the entire day was better than anything she could’ve asked for. 

She hadn’t realised how much she missed him. Missed his laugh as Bella did something silly, missed his voice as he narrated to her how he had found Bella, missed the softness in his eyes as Bella eventually dozed, exhausted from meeting and playing with Tessa.

Once Bella had fallen asleep, Tessa had given her thanks to Scott for meeting her that day, and had said that it was wonderful meeting Bella. Scott had walked her to his front door, grabbed her coat for her, opened it up for her to step into.

He had opened the door and she had stepped out. She turned around to face him.

“Bye, Tessa,” he said, mouth quirking slightly to the side, “don’t be a stranger.” His last words were softer.

Tessa had realised that in the years where she had severed contact, she had basically become that. A stranger.

“I won’t,” she avows. “Besides, you have my number now, Moir.”

“True, true,” he chuckles, leaning against the doorframe. “I’ll hold you to that, Virtch.”

Tessa wanted nothing more than to pull him in close and hug him, let their bodies fit together like they used to, but—

—baby steps.

So she settles for a wave, and walks away. After several paces, she looks over shoulder. He’s still looking at her. He waves back.

When she had gotten home, she had heard a notification on her phone. She opened it. It was a text from Scott, a blurry selfie of him and a sleeping Bella.

_Hope you got home safely, Tessa. Good night,_ it said.

_I did. Good night Scott_ , she had texted back. 

She breathes and turns to her side, rests her cheek on her hand and closes her eyes. Sleep soon overtakes her. The last image she thinks of is Scott cuddling a golden ball of fur in his arms, grinning so, so wide that his eyes crinkle at the sides.

***

She wakes up in his arms. Warmth and muscle surround her, and her half-asleep self burrows further into it. _Home_. She sleepily thinks, nuzzling the space between his shoulder and collarbone. She feels a rumble beneath her cheek, and she knows if she looks up, Scott would be chuckling down at her.

She looks up. “Hi.”

“Hi.” His voice is sleep-roughened and gravelly. His hands stroke the curve of her spine, one of them venturing upwards to tangle softly in her hair. The other rests low on her back, his thumb drawing lazy circles on her bare skin.

The thing about waking up in this dream universe is that it’s all-too-easy to forget that it’s a dream. It lacks the hazy quality of other dreams, and all her senses seem to latch onto details with startling clarity. It feels so _real_.

She’ll sometimes wonder what she’ll do once she stops having these dreams, these wonderful, wonderful snippets of a home and a family with Scott and Sophie. It tugs at something in her chest, something deep and raw and wanting.

The image of her Scott, the real Scott, cradling his golden puppy flickers in her mind. They’re not yet home, not quite family, but—they could be. If she somehow succeeds in bridging her friendship with Scott—and she feels a real sense of hope that she could—maybe she’ll get to have her best friend again, her partner. She’ll be the best aunt to Bella, shower her with presents on all special occasions, and on mundane days as well just because she wants to.

She knows that while her initial assumption that Bella was Scott’s girlfriend was proven incorrect, this didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be another woman in the future. One who would walk down the aisle in white while Scott gazes at her with tears glistening in his eyes.

Tessa wonders where she’ll be in the audience. Will Scott somehow convince his future fiancée to let Tessa be one of the bridesmaids? Or will she have successfully fought it out against his brothers for the role of best (wo)man? Or will her family just be given a pew somewhere in the church to watch from as Scott pledges all his love, all his heart, to another woman?

She halts her train of thought and wraps her arms around this Scott. Any moment and place in time is the result of the person’s choices before it. Tessa’s grateful for the choices that Tessa in this universe made. One that gave her a family and a home with Scott.

She burrows even further into Scott’s warmth.

She thought it would be more awkward to dream of being married to Scott after she saw him again in her reality. She thought there’d be a clanging dissonance between the Scott in her dreams who’s in love with her, and the Scott in her reality who isn’t.

There’s some underlying awkwardness with her Scott, the real Scott, but that was inevitable with the years and miles they spent apart.

But the way he had looked at her—

_Open_ , she thinks. _Warm._ He had looked at her the way he used to, before distance and emptiness and time apart. It’s the same way this Scott looks at her.

He looks at her now.

She feels like she can drown in hazel.

“I’m gonna check on Sophie,” she whispers, shifting out of his arms. She doesn’t really want to move from Scott's embrace, but her baby might need her. 

Her baby. 

There’s a hollow sort of feeling inside Tessa, and she wonders what it must’ve been like to carry Sophie inside her. Scott would’ve been the most doting husband and she can vaguely picture him always chatting to the bump, the joy that must’ve been on his face when he first felt the baby kick.

It’s hard for her to picture falling in love with another man after Scott, after the disaster with Richard (especially now, as she wonders whether she had loved him in any meaningful way), so she doesn’t think her own womb will swell with her own child.

But Scott will definitely be a father. Maybe not now, but in the near or distant future. She can’t imagine that compassionate, warm-hearted, selfless man as anything other than one. She’ll shower his children with her own love, she resolves, treat them like her pseudo-nieces-and-nephews the same way she intends to with Bella.

As she pulls away from Scott, though, his arms follow her.

“I’ll come with you,” he murmurs into the shell of her ear. His breath skates along her sensitive skin and a shiver runs along her spine.

She hears him laugh as he wraps an arm around her waist. “Later, Tess,” he promises, “let’s check on Sophie first."

***

Sophie is still sleeping peacefully when they open the door to her nursery. Tessa kneels down beside Sophie’s crib, her fingertip reaching out tentatively to stroke Sophie’s skin. Tessa’s made a habit of this ever since these dreams started happening. Every moment of tactility with her baby is a treasure she stores in her heart, like drops of honey in a jar stored for a long winter.

Scott slots himself in beside Tessa. He wraps his arm around her, placing his own hand atop Tessa’s hand that’s on Sophie. He kisses Tessa’s temple and squeezes her shoulder. Tessa settles against him.

“She’s so beautiful, isn’t she?” Scott murmurs, “just like her mum.”

“And her dad.” Tessa elbows him. Scott sucks in a quick breath from the impact, exaggeratedly rubbing his side. Tessa rolls her eyes at him, knowing she didn’t hit him that hard. She barely suppresses her laugh, not wanting to wake Sophie up. Luckily, she sleeps through her parents’ antics.

Sophie shifts slightly, turning her head to the side, her tiny mouth opening and closing.

“I’m so lucky,” Scott says, “to have her. To have you.” He turns towards Tessa, runs his hands from her shoulders to her forearms. Tessa rests her hands on his chest. Scott curls his fingers around Tessa’s hands, feeling them rise and fall in time with their breaths.

“Thank you for choosing me,” he says. There’s some hint of pain that laces his voice and it sears Tessa’s heart. They open their eyes, looking into the depths of each others’ irises, hazel meeting green.

_I’ll always choose you_ , she wants to say, but she thinks of her own reality, where she didn’t choose him. Granted, she was certain then that he wasn’t an option. Nevertheless, she knows she didn’t choose him when she didn’t fight for their friendship, when she didn’t protect their partnership, when she let her own anguish at her perceived unrequited love get the better of her.

“Thank you for loving me,” she says instead. Now, she often wonders whether there was any chance in the past that they could’ve been anything more and they had just missed each other.

She thinks of Scott and Bella in her reality. _I choose you, Scott._

_I choose our friendship. I choose our partnership. I choose you, in whatever way you’ll have me._

Her hands trace up his chest, along his firm shoulders. Her arms wrap around his neck. His hands drop to wrap around her waist. She doesn’t know where his breath ends and hers begins.

Tessa knows she’ll wake up at some point, will roll over to the other side of the bed, will reach her fingers out and only grasp cool bedsheets. 

For now, she savours her family with Scott and Sophie.

For now, she savours Scott’s embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I wanted this to be mostly fluffy and sweet but a little angst still slipped through because I live for the angst, apparently. Sorry.
> 
> Hope you have a lovely day <3


	8. like the golden sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its_been_84_years.gif
> 
> Sorry for the wait, my loves. I've put the bulk of my author's notes in the end notes. Hope you enjoy <3

“Christmas? With you?”

Tessa watches Scott run his hands sheepishly through his hair. “I mean—” he starts, “you don’t have to—and we don’t have to do _Christmas-_ Christmas—” He crinkles his eyes and smiles softly. “I just remember you saying that you didn’t have much plans for the holidays other than seeing your mom on Christmas day, so I wondered if you wanted to spend a day with Bella and me before I head back home?”

It had been a few weeks since Tessa had bumped into Scott again at the coffee shop. Tentatively, through text messages that became more and more frequent as the days passed, and shorter gaps between the times that they made the effort to see each other around, they were—not rebuilding whatever they once had, but building something new, something that in some ways are the same, but also different.

The eager expression in Scott's eyes, on his mouth, in the tilt of his chin, that's the same. That's something she's seen on his face at every age since he was nine.

The flutter in her heart, to tell the truth, is more similar than what she’d like to admit.

The readiness with which she’s coming to accept what she feels for him, though, that is decidedly different.

“I’d love that.” Her answer is soft but sure, a little vulnerable. She thinks loving him gets easier every day. There's a part of her that's sometimes scared that she'll reveal too much of what she feels to Scott, but maybe she's starting to realise that him realising the truth isn't the worst thing that can happen.

She doesn't see his hug coming. The next thing she feels is his solid weight and warmth around her, arms wrapped tight, nose tucked in the crook of his neck. Her eyes instinctively close, her hands meeting around his back. It's just a hug, something simple. Sweet, yes, but nothing out of the ordinary. People all over the world hug each other all the time for all sorts of mundane reasons.

But Tessa supposes they're not a girl who's somehow, against all odds, managed to find her way home again. They're not a girl who's realised that the way she's always remembered the feeling of being in the arms of the boy she's loved the most can't compare to the reality of it.

Sometimes, a hug is just a hug. This exquisite beauty of her soul sighing like a puzzle piece filling into place isn't one of those times.

They pull back after a while, but barely.

“I'll see you in a few days then, T?”

“Yeah.” She's sure the light in her eyes spells out the eight letters she hasn't strung together in the three words she hasn't said. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

**

Christmas, it turns out, is going to be a very involved affair. Scott is very adamant that they, including Bella, are going to have the perfect Christmas-even-though-it’s-not-yet-Christmas if he has anything to say about it.

“So, we’ll need to decorate the tree, put up all the lights in the house…” He pauses in his thinking then, chewing the tip of the pen lid. Tessa is transfixed by the movement of his mouth, but you probably won't be able to make her the admit the reason why.

Scott continues, “We’ll bake something Christmassy, like cookies maybe?" He gives her another of those grins that make her stupid heart flutter. “Definitely have to play a  Christmas classic playlist, eh Tess?”

She shakes her head at him, biting back a smile. She's not going to give him the satisfaction of making her laugh that easily. But there's something kind of triumphant in the way he look at her, so maybe there's something else  that’s betrayed her mirth.

She becomes more aware of the slight shaking in her shoulders, the way her eyes have squinted from creasing at the sides, and she realises her answer.

Bella chooses that moment to nose her way into Tessa's lap. She gives this adorable sort of  yip as Tessa rubs her fur.

“You're excited for this aren't you, Bella?” Tessa coos, bringing her and Bella's noses together, and quickly shakes her head back and forth in a butterfly kiss. When she looks up, Scott's eyes are impossibly soft.

“Well,” Scott gets up, “There's lots to do, so we better get started, yeah?”

**

Scott had somehow managed to wrangle a tree into his abode. It stood in the middle of his living room, not too tall, not too short. At the moment, it's standing proudly in the corner of his living room, lush and vibrant and green. Yet it’s also a blank canvas, beckoning to be adorned with ornaments.

She’s expecting a few boxes of new baubles in mismatched matte and glittery colours, and she finds them on Scott's coffee table. Scott seems to have opted for a traditional theme as he's got boxes of them in deep red and vibrant green.

(If Tessa could read Scott's mind, she'd find out the reason for his colour choices. Green for the colour of her eyes. A deep red for the colour of the dress that she wore when they won the world and achieved their greatest dream.)

There's also strands of Christmas lights and lengths of tinsel, a gold star tucked among the decorations, waiting to be perched on top of the finished tree.

She follows Scott's lead and sits down near the Christmas tree.

“So what's the plan, Scott? What are we doing first?”

“Uh, lights first, do you think?”

“Then the tinsel and the baubles?” Tessa finishes for him.

He grins at her again, “Yeah, that sounds great. I'm glad we're on the same page.”

Bella barks, unwilling to be left out of the conversation.

It doesn't take long to put the tree together. Tessa finds that the two of them quickly find their groove, able to work almost seamlessly to get the tree decorated.

When they stand back to finish their handiwork, Scott holds his hand up for a high five. Tessa doesn’t hesitate to give him one. He catches her fingers in his, slowly and gently and hesitantly, loose enough that she could let go if she wants to, but she doesn’t. Their linked hands fall in the quietness between them.

**

The next place Tessa finds herself in is Scott’s kitchen because the next most important thing to do was bake Christmas cookies. The sleeves of his dark green sweater are rolled up to his elbows and she would be lying if she said it had no effect on her.

She shakes her head minutely to get rid of that train of thought.

He’s getting all the ingredients that they need and she moves uncertainly toward him. “Anything I can do to help?” she asks.

There's something mischievous in his expression as he ducks down to retrieve something. He surfaces with two aprons. “Put one of these on, T. You're going to be my sous baker for this afternoon.”

She rolls her eyes as she takes one of the aprons from him, picking the green over the red.

“Hey, nice choice, it's gonna make your eyes go kapow!”

She's transported back to another era, standing in a room full of fabric and pins and cameras and stress. But also a moment that was punctuated by a quick burst of joy and the familiar fond exasperation that she's felt for this boy since she met him.

There's something sweetly domestic about making Christmas cookies together. She can't help but feel that this is a situation that calls for tiny, chubby hands reaching up to press shapes on the cookie dough, for the sound of tinkling laughter and shrieks of delight as their dad playfully threatens to start a food fight.

Once again, she wonders what's led Scott to not have started his family yet. Selfishly, her heart can admit that it's thankful it hasn't yet had to go through the sort of exquisite pain of seeing the one you love wholeheartedly love another, but still. Scott's happiness is greater than any selfish want she could have.

She wonders, though, if she could be the one that could make him happy.

She feels a nudge at her elbow.

“Hey, T, where'd you go? I think I lost you there.”

“Oh? Hmmmm, I was just...thinking.”

He presses a Christmas tree out of the dough. “About?”

The words leave her before she can process what she's said, “Your kids.”

“What?”

Her eyes widen. Shit. “I mean—” Is there a sane way of describing what she's thinking? She gestures to the baking that they're doing. “If you had kids, they'd be the ones helping you out here, right? They'd be the ones who are cutting out all the cookies and decorating them later.”

“They’d be the ones trying to lick the dough off the spoon,” Scott adds, softly.

“They’d be the ones peering in the oven door, impatiently waiting for the cookies to finish.”

“They’d be the ones who couldn’t wait for the cookies to cool before picking up one for a bite.”

“Yeah,” she sighs. She clamps her lips shut, afraid the plaintiveness slipped out too quickly, too quietly for her to notice. She turns back towards the bit of dough she’s rolling out. “You think I’d still be here helping out, then? Are your kids gonna bake with Aunt Tessa?” she chuckles at that, teasing.

“Not Aunt Tessa.” He scrunches up his nose.

Tessa's body grows cold. She was sure that she and Scott were beginning to build their friendship again, but apparently he doesn't feel the same way, if he doesn’t feel comfortable enough having his hypothetical kids baking with her. Apparently, that kind of familiarity is a step too far. There’s still time though—right? Surely, it’s not too late. Surely—although maybe she doesn’t deserve it, but god, she wants to deserve it, so, so, so badly—in time, she could be good friends enough with Scott that he wouldn’t be uncomfortable at the idea of his kids spending time with her.

Tessa thinks about how it’s such a little phrase to get upset over but she can feel the ache behind her eyes and in her throat. She’s afraid to breathe because it’ll come out as a near-sob. She grips the handle of the rolling pin tighter.

“Hey, T, can you pass the—T?” She hears Scott’s voice, but she’s closed her eyes and curved her shoulders inwards.

He gently uncurls her fingertips from the rolling pin which must have turned white from the pressure that she pressed them with.

“Tess, talk to me? What happened? What’s wrong?”

She doesn’t know how to answer him, but she supposes the truth seems as good a place to start as any.

“Why don’t you want your kids to bake with me?”

Scott cocks his head, confused.

“You said,” her voice wavers, “‘Not Aunt Tessa’.”

“Oh!” Scott grabs her hands. “No, that’s definitely not what I meant. I’m sorry, that came out wrong.”

“Then what did you mean?” There’s definitely tears on her eyelids now.

“I meant that I can't picture them calling you Aunt Tessa.”

That doesn’t sound much better. Hearing it clarified somehow makes Tessa feel worse.

She pushes through, because if she’s gonna hear it, she might as well hear it all, “Why don’t you want your kids to call me Aunt Tessa?”

Scott blinks. Once, twice, thrice. His hands shift from her hands to her elbows, drawing her closer. “Because...um, because they already have one. My brother’s wife. I don’t want them to get confused.”

She stares at him. It sounds like the flimsiest of excuses. If Scott pressed his ear to her sternum, he’d hear a thousand tiny fractures, not enough to shatter her heart, but precarious enough that any other blow, however unintentional, would smatter in into sharp, splintering smithereens.

She realises the honest, painful truth. “You don’t want me as part of your life.” She whispers it to the ground, but Scott catches it anyway.

“T, no, that’s not true, okay?” He rubs his thumbs up and down her arms, “Tess, I would never not want you to be a part of my life, okay? We grew apart for a while, but we’re here now. I guess it’s time that we’ve had this conversation, huh?” He pauses, makes sure her eyes are looking at his, “We grew apart for a while, yes, but it’s not your fault, okay? I could’ve tried a lot, lot harder to keep in touch. But we’re here now, and we’re going to trust that we’re going to work hard to be there for each other.”

“Okay.”

“And my hypothetical kids are pretty far off in the future, if I’m gonna have kids at all. We can figure out what they can call you when we get there, okay?”

“Okay.” She frowns as she catches onto what Scott said. “ _If_ you’re gonna have kids at all? Scott, I thought a family was what you wanted most after—after our retirement.” She scrapes her bottom lip with her teeth, tapping her fingers on his arm, “I guess—I guess everything’s changed.”

“No—I mean yes, I mean, I thought it was what I wanted, and I do still want it, I guess, but it’s not—it wasn’t something I could picture for a long time.”

“And now you can?”

“Most nights,” his voice, so soft and vulnerable, skates over her skin, “it’s something that’s becoming easier to picture.”

He looks away, gaze unfocusing, “I guess some things have changed. But a lot of things are still the same.”

His thumbs are tracing circles on her skin, soothing, as he continues, “I'm still me, and you're still you. And that doesn’t mean nothing’s changed in between, but I’m still Scott. You’re still Tessa.” He takes her left hand, slowly, loosely enough that she could pull back if she wanted, and presses it over his chest. “I—I have the same heart as the nine-year-old boy whose hand you took at that Ilderton rink ages ago.”

The steady pulse of his heart drums beneath her palm. The sound of the lub-dub lulls her, almost like she can hear the syllables of her name in his heartbeat. _Tes-sa, Tes-sa_. She blinks the thought away, focusing instead on the familiarity of the rhythm.

She breathes easier, smiling up at him through the tears balanced on her eyes.

"You're still Scott," she echoes him, "and I'm still Tessa."

**

Scott sends her home with a box of the cookies they made together. Tessa says goodbye to Bella first, gently scratching her under her chin and rubbing her fur. She stands up to face him.

“Thanks for spending the day with me and Bella, T. It wouldn't have been the same without you.” He ducks his head, “And I'm so sorry for making you cry. I—I wish I hadn't done that.”

She raises up on her tiptoes to hug him. There’s a split-second where he stumbles back but he quickly rights himself. She knows he’d never let her fall.

 _Except in love_ , she muses, but he doesn’t know about that particular thing, she's pretty sure. Even if he did, it’s not something that can be easily or willfully stopped.

“Thanks for inviting me,” she answers, curling her hands at the hair at the base of his neck. She presses her forehead to his shoulder, a bit embarrassed. “And I shouldn’t have cried. It was an overreaction on my part. You didn’t mean anything bad. I just—I was so scared that I was hoping for too much to have you back in my life.” The last sentence leaves her in a rush.

She feels his intake of breath, “Tess, that—that would never be too much.”

She lets go and lowers her heels back to the ground. She steps back slowly. “I’ll see you when you get back?”

“I’ll see you when I get back.” He smiles softly, and lifts his hand up in a wave. “Have a good Christmas, Tess. Have fun with your mom. Wish her a merry Christmas for me.”

“You too.” She tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “Wish your family a merry Christmas for me too?” She inwardly winces, knowing that she had also distanced herself from his family as much as she had distanced herself from him.

“They’d love to hear that from you, T. Maybe—maybe you can visit them? Sometime? It doesn’t need to be soon, of course, but...they’d love to see you.”

“They would?”

“Yeah, they would.”

“Okay, I will. Bye, Scott. Have a good Christmas.”

**

She goes to bed, and sleeps, and dreams.

**

She wakes up to a kiss on her forehead. She slowly opens her eyes. She feels the scratchier bedsheets, smells that scent that’s so utterly Scott, and realises she’s back in this exquisite dream of a family with Scott.

“Hi.” Scott’s smiling down at her.

“Hi.” She stretches her arms and arches her back. His face is close enough that when she raises herself on her elbows, he captures her lips with his. As she lowers herself back down, Scott follows her. Up to a point. He breaks apart from her, causing her to whimper.

“You gotta get up, T. We’re decorating the tree today, remember?” He presses a quick kiss to the corner of her mouth. “And you promised me and Sophie some dancing to my Christmas classic playlist?” He shifts to kiss the other side.

When he pulls back, he lingers above her, teasing, before sitting up, coaxing her to sit up as well. Tessa follows suit, smiling softly, “Okay, let’s do that.”

After breakfast that Scott cooks for the three of them, he disappears in one of the hallway cupboards to get the box of Christmas decorations. Tessa’s grateful that he decided to do that because she would not have known where to find their Christmas decorations.

“You can’t wait to decorate the tree, can you Sophia?” she playfully asks her baby. Sophia claps her hands together and giggles.

Scott reappears with a clear container. She can see Christmas lights, tinsel, and baubles. As Scott opens it, Tessa spies ornaments in deep greens and reds, similar to the ones real-life Scott had. But what really catches her eye are Christmas baubles that had been customised with photos of their family, of photos of Sophie, of photos of her and Scott.

Tessa manoeuvres herself to sit on the ground, Sophie sitting on her lap. Curious, Sophie reaches out for the colourful ornaments, but Tessa gently stops her, wary to let her have any for fear of harming her.

Scott notices Sophie reaching and roots around the box for a while, before surfacing with a few small stuffed Christmas animals, wearing Christmas hats and scarves, with thick ribbon sewed at the heads for hanging on the tree.

“These—” Scott emphasises to Sophie by placing the stuffed animals in front of her, “are okay for you to play with, Soph. No buttons or things that could fall off that’s bad for putting in your mouth, and no risk of breaking them into sharp bits either. Mama can help you hang them on the tree later, once Dad’s done putting the lights and the tinsel.”

Scott’s face lights up. “Wait! I’m just gonna put on my Christmas classic playlist!” He scrambles to get—a bluetooth speaker, Tessa realises, before connecting it to his phone. The familiar tinkling tunes of Christmas carols fill their living room.

It’s a lovely morning spent with her little family. Tessa finds that she forgets more and more often that these are dreams, and that it’ll end soon, but—she chooses to savour what she has right now, instead of pondering on when it’s going to end.

She’ll wake up to a reality where she’ll have Scott and her trusting that they’ll work to keep each other in their lives and it’s not the same kind of beautiful, but it’s still a good kind of different.

She helps Sophie put on the stuffed animal decorations close to the bottom of the tree, while Scott takes care of the higher-up ornaments.

He sits down next to them and opens his arms up for Sophie to go into them. She does so eagerly, making Tessa laugh. She grabs one of the customised photo ornaments to hang up on the tree. The photo is one of the three of them. Sophie’s pink, wrinkled body is impossible tiny, paying on Tessa’s chest. She’s wearing a hospital gown and Scott’s sitting on a chair beside her. It must have been taken not long after Sophie was born. She rubs her thumbs over the glass casing, over where her hand is cradling Sophie’s body, and Scott’s hand is on top of hers.

Her little family.

She wants. She wants so badly.

She hangs up the ornament on the tree, fingertips lingering on the glass.

**

Once the tree’s all decorated and the box and extra decorations are put away, Scott insists on continuing dancing to Christmas songs. He’s got Sophie in his arms, singing the words to her.

“What do you think, Sophie? You want to dance with Mama?”

Sophie opens her mouth, “Muh.”

Both Scott and Tessa gasp.

“Mama, Sophie? You want to say Mama?” Scott encourages. Tessa remains speechless.

“Muh-muh.”

Scott raucously whoops. “Oh, Sophie! My smart baby girl! That’s your first word!”

Tessa brings her hands to her mouth, disbelieving. She’s still frozen to the spot. Scott turns to her grinning.

“Tess!” He rushes towards her, still holding Sophie, and gathers her into the tightest embrace. “Our baby’s said her first word!”

“She said ‘Mama’.” The words leave her in barely a whisper.

“She did.” His voice softens. “It’s because you love your Mama so much, don’t you Soph?”

“Muh-ma.” Sophie says again, reaching out for Tessa. Scott obligingly transfers her over to Tessa.

Tessa cradles her precious baby in her arms, kissing her forehead. “Mama’s here, Sophie. Mama’s here. Mama loves you so very much.”

**

They’re curled up in their bed much, much later, their limbs entangled between the sheets. Tessa’s closed her eyes and tucked herself in close to Scott, relishing the weight of his arm on her as he embraces her. Slumber is beckoning her quickly.

But before she slips under, she whispers a question to Scott.

“Scott, you’re—you’re not upset that Sophie said ‘Mama’ before ‘Dada’, are you?” She’s fairly certain that she knows the answer. The love that Scott in her dreams has for both her and Sophie radiates from him like the golden sun. She doesn’t think he would. Still, some part of her wanted to ask, to make sure that he doesn’t feel any less loved. She knows he would have done the same for her.

He chuckles, dips his head down to kiss her on her nose, “No, Tess. Definitely not. Do you know why?”

“Why?” Her mind is barely conscious, barely holding onto the question she originally asked.

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted my kids to call you.” Scott remarks softly, thumb brushing her cheekbone.

“Hmmm?” She’s on the precipice of falling asleep. She wonders about the mechanics of falling asleep if she’s technically dreaming and therefore really asleep, but that thought’s too complicated and she lets it go in favour of squeezing closer to Scott, brushing her nose against the skin of his chest.

She feels him run his fingers through her hair, brushing another kiss to the crown of her head. “Mama. That's all I've ever wanted my kids to call you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *waves sheepishly* Hi? Anyone still there? 
> 
> I am so, so, so sorry with how long it took me to write this chapter. From the Christmas content, it may not surprise you to know that there was a me in December 2018 that thought this would be done by then. It is now April. I got derailed by other writings and procrastination and lack of inspiration and a lot of other excuses...but at least it's done now, right?
> 
> Also, I probably should've done more proper editing, but I just wanted to get this out. I'll be doing some cleaning up over the next few days.
> 
> Let me know what you thought <3


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